The Roolz

Warm enough for you? 32°c at 9.00 am here today (NB Tory Blair & Fat Donnie). Anyway, The Roolz has some bangin’ new tunes to greet summer proper.

A brief diversion. Suno is an AI programme which allows any idiot to make a great sounding track in minutes. No musical experience needed. Therefore I hate it. But, BUT… there are exceptions to every level of hate. Benny Rivers is a bot; I have no idea whether or not his creators used Suno, but ‘Step By Step In Time’ is so darn good that I challenge you to tell me it’s not real. When holography is added to such sonic brilliance, music as we know it will be dead. But so shall I.

Lola Young. Where shall I start? The girl from Croydon has won EVERYTHING: a sort of British Billie Eilish – Ivor Novello, PRS, Brit, ASCAP and Grammy awards. The day after winning her 2026 Grammy for ‘Messy’ Lola sat down and wrote a new song. It’s called ‘From Down Here’ and it’s totally brilliant.

Mollie Elizabeth is a young lady from the Pacific northwest. She’s just released her first EP ‘Dirty Blonde’ and I’ve chosen her take on ‘Run Rabbit’ to cheer your sundowner!

It’s hard to keep a band together these days – especially an 8-piece. However, The Revivalists from New Orleans have somehow managed to put food on the table for all and their new song ‘Heart Stop’ might even allow for a digestif. Maybe they should have called themselves the Survivalists.

These are just notes on a few of the additions to The Roolz for the summer of 2026. To hear them all will require a lot of listening. Bon courage, mes amis.

I am now stepping away from Facebook for a while. I may be some time.

So it’s not so odd about Odd Marshall. The man’s been listening to The Roolz (yes, miracles do happen) and he’s sent us a bio. Just wow. From high school in Canada to open mic nights in London. In Shepherd’s Bush he watched a kid with looping pedals and a million words play for 90 minutes without breaking a sweat. Odd sheepishly approached and asked if they might do something together. The kid said he was off to Los Angeles, but maybe they could hook up when he got back.

That kid was Ed Sheeran.

Odd travelled to Bollywood to direct TV commercials, moved to Beijing and then back to Brooklyn before retiring to a family cabin in the woop-woops. He has written four novels and fifteen screenplays. Odd says ‘’I’m building my audience, even if it’s one person at a time.”

I totally get that. Listen to ‘Outta Here’.

And now to the magnificent, Grammy award winning, cancer surviving, professed le***an Melissa Etheridge. What a life. In partnership with film director Julie Cypher two children, Bailey Jean & Beckett, were produced with s***m donated by David Crosby. In 2020 Melissa announced via Twitter that her son, Beckett, had died from opioid poisoning at the age of 21.

From her new album ‘Rise’, due for release next month, Melissa celebrates the joy of ‘Bein’ Alive’.